India and Pakistan are both currently facing a huge locust incursion that is severely harming agriculture and farmer’s livelihood. So, we have prepared a thread discussing why such locust attacks occur! (1/9)

Locust plagues have always been considered as devastations of biblical proportions but scientists have recently understood why exactly these destructive events, that cause so much harm to our farmers, take place. (2/9)

Locusts are normally solitary creatures, that pass time the same way most other grasshoppers do. However, the ravenous insects we know them to be, form when they ‘swarm’ and go through a physiological change. (3/9)

This change occurs when, because of certain changes in environmental conditions such as heavy rains, locusts breed like crazy! hatching an estimated 1000 eggs per square meter. Because of this excessive breeding, when the eggs hatch there is immense overcrowding. (4/9)

This forces them to sense and interact with each other and enter into a gregarious/ sociable phase. When they enter this stage their bodies transform! Serotonin is released into the CNS and their bodies become larger, colour darker and their brains change. (5/9)

This is when they begin to form titanic swarms of insatiable creatures that, according to the FAO, can consume as much food as would be eaten by 35,000 people (or six elephants) in a single day (a swarm of just 1 square km). (6/9)

The effect this has on farmers is totally devastating as they can destroy between 50-80% of crops. As excellent flyers, they reap this depredation in countless regions across countries. (7/9)

Given this understanding of locusts behaviour it is incredibly important to ask what threat such swarms pose to food security? Especially considering that they migrate across regions with low food security such as Africa and eastwards to Yemen, Pakistan and India. (8/9)

And what effect does climate change and the abnormal and extreme weather changes it brings, such as unprecedented rainfall or cyclones, have on locust behavior? (9/9)